Law firms push into stem cells

Law firms market different types of legal work with the ebb and flow of the economy. In recessions, bankruptcy practices boom; at the peak of the dot-com era, high-tech practices were hot.

Now, in keeping with the boom in cutting-edge life science research, several firms are promoting a new legal specialty: stem cells.

Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham, a Pittsburgh-based firm with an office in Boston, launched a "stem cell technology practice" earlier this year. San Francisco-based Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman has a "stem cell outlook and planning effort." Sterne Kessler Goldstein Fox in Washington D.C. formed a "stem cell task force." And the website StemCellAttorneys.com links to Foley & Lardner, a Milwaukee-based firm with a Boston office.

Many firms have been doing stem cell legal work for years, most often involving patents . But the specialty has spiked in prominence since California passed a bond measure two years ago that devotes $3 billion to stem cell research, fueling demand for related legal services. That has prompted firms nationwide to position themselves as go-to legal advisors for universities, research facilities, biotechnology companies, and other clients in the stem cell arena.

"There's going to be tons of legal work, and everywhere -- at the state level, at the federal level, at the policy level," said Boston lawyer John M. Garvey, a member of the "stem cell technologies" team at Foley & Lardner, which represents domestic and overseas clients involved in stem cell research. "It was a matter of law firms' understanding that scientific information about stem cells had progressed to the point that many nonscientific issues had developed, so then the question was: How do you translate that into good, profitable, high-level legal work?"

Scientists believe stem cells can be used to repair specific tissues and grow organs, giving them the capacity to treat and possibly cure human diseases. Embryonic stems cells, in particular, have the power to become any cell in the body, but their use involves destroying days-old human embryos, posing an ethical dilemma.

For now, lawyers working in the stem cell field are primarily focused on obtaining, licensing, and enforcing patents for stem cell technologies. But as the science matures, their clients will need a range of legal assistance: clearing regulatory hurdles at agencies like the Food and Drug Administration, navigating tax and financing issues, securing investment funding from venture capitalists, negotiating real estate deals for new facilities, and managing the litigation that inevitably will arise as stem cell products are commercialized.

California is a primary hub of stem cell research in the United States due to the public funding it has devoted . But Massachusetts is active in the field, too: Advanced Cell Technology Inc. has a laboratory in Worcester that focuses on embryonic stem cell research, and Harvard said in June that it plans to try to create cloned human embryonic stem cells.

The stem cell technology practice at Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham was started because the firm recognized the potential of the developing science and wanted to educate itself on stem cell issues that could affect its clients, said Thomas A. Turano, a Kirkpatrick partner in Boston who is one of about a dozen lawyers in the stem cell group.

The group has monthly conference calls to discuss developments in the field and periodically alerts its biotech clients of noteworthy issues, but has so far generated "substantially zero" revenue from stem cell legal services, Turano said.

"We're not doing much at the moment other than tracking it from a scientific view, but it's an investment on our part in the future," said Turano. "The amount of money we've made on this is minuscule, but the science is progressing, so this is something we think we have to be on top of for our clients."

Stem cell legal practices are in large part marketing tools. Traditionally, general practice law firms offered the same basic menu of legal services: corporate, trusts and estates, tax, real estate, litigation. As competition among firms heightened and clients' legal needs became more complex, firms created subspecialties -- mezzanine financing, nanotechnology, corporate governance -- to distinguish themselves. Stem cell work is an outgrowth of that.

Skeptics consider stem cell practices public relations gimmicks, noting that many law firms have extensive experience in stem cell issues even though they don't have formal stem cell practice groups.

Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, for example, does stem cell patent work for Massachusetts General Hospital and Cytomatrix, a Chelmsford biotech company. Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky, and Popeo represents StemCells Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif., company. Fish & Richardson does stem cell patent work for the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. Yet none of those law firms has a so-called stem cell group.

"Some firms are saying they have stem cell practices, but you have to look behind the curtain and say, 'Can you show me some examples of your stem cell patent applications?' because there just aren't that many law firms with real expertise in this area," said Mintz partner Ivor R. Elrifi, who has been doing stem cell legal work for more than a decade.

"We don't have a little group called the 'stem cell working group' or 'We are Stem Cells' or 'Stems Cells R Us,' " Elrifi added, "but we know a lot."

Sacha Pfeiffer can be reached at pfeiffer@globe.com.